Hale says tapes may be altered, seeks acquittal

July 30, 2004

CHICAGO — In a new motion made public Thursday, jailed white supremacist Matthew Hale contended the government may have altered a key undercover recording from 2002 that led to his conviction in April on charges he solicited the murder of a federal judge.

In the motion, Hale said he thought his security chief, then secretly working for the FBI, was talking about a lawyer and not U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow when the informant asked him, "We gonna exterminate the rat?"

"While I am innocent of soliciting anyone's murder, it is Judge Lefkow's murder whom I have been convicted of soliciting and if there is any reasonable doubt that she was the intended target, I am entitled to a judgment of acquittal as a matter of law," Hale wrote. He asked for an independent analysis of the tape because a few words on a draft transcript differed from the final version.